Fan History is Breaking Wiki Size Barriers

May 29, 2009 - PRLog -- Sleepy Hollow, Illinois – If you are looking for information about fans and all the activities they engage in, you need to check out Fan History Wiki located at http://www.fanhistory.com/ . In May 2009, in trying to become the best resource of its kind, Fan History became the biggest MediaWiki-based wiki that is not part of the Wikimedia Foundation with over 750,000 articles.

Fan History’s accomplishment has been several years in the making.  Since May 2006, the project has been working on documenting the history of fan communities.  Fan History started with some basic history information that had originally been found on FanFiction.Net.  The focus had been on media fandom and fan fiction.  In 2007, the focus changed and became broader and less focused on fan fiction.  In 2008, Fan History created a directory of members of the fan community and added over half a million articles in the process of doing that.  Fan History also added statistical information that updates daily; the wiki tracks the growth of fan fiction and LiveJournal communities representing over 4,000 television shows, anime shows, musical groups, actors and video games.  In 2009, Fan History continued its expansion and breadth of topics covered.  This was done by adding articles about fanzines, musical groups, movies and episodes of television. At every step, the fandom community responded, helped improve many of our stubs and added new content.

Fan History’s place as the biggest wiki of its kind is good news for those seeking to document the history of fandom.  The size of the wiki has led to an increase in traffic and number of contributors.  It has meant that important or interesting things in fandom have been documented for others to learn from.  This includes covering events such as the kerfuffle over Russet Noon in the Twilight fan community, how Dreamwidth Studios was viewed within the LiveJournal fan community, on going issues related to racism in fandom, how Police fans responded to the concert tour, and the current and past role of fanzines in fandom.   Many of these events are not covered elsewhere.  The current size and scope of the project makes this possible where other wikis and projects not in wiki format cannot.

For a list of the largest MediaWikis, see http://s23.org/wikistats/largest_html.php .

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Fan History is a collaborative project like none other currently serving the fandom community. Its core function is as a wiki which allows members of fandom - men and women, young and old - to actively participate in documenting the history of their various fandoms, share current news which may impact their experiences, as well as creating an easily searchable web index of related communities, projects, and activities. It gives members of fandom a chance to share current fandom news that may impact people’s experiences in fandom. Fan History users can also promote their own creative projects, and share opinions with fellow fans and alert them to scams and questionable practices encountered within fandom. By providing these resources, Fan History allows users to celebrate their activities, whichever corner of fandom they come from: anime, cartoons, comics, movies, politics, radio, science fiction, sports, television, theater, and video games.